Aaron Swartz: North Shore teachers recall Internet prodigy

Aaron Swartz poses in a Borderland Books in San Francisco on Fe. 4, 2008. Internet activist and programmer Swartz, who helped create an early version of RSS and later played a key role in stopping a controversial online piracy bill in Congress, has died at age 26, an apparent suicide, New York authorities said Jan. 13. (Noah Berger, Reuters)

Many people in Highland Park, where Aaron Swartz was raised, continue to struggle with his suicide at age 26 earlier this month as he faced federal prosecution for downloading millions of academic articles without authorization.

"He was challenging in all the best ways," said Jim Leesch, a teacher at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, which Swartz attended from second through ninth grade.

"He made me think — and as a teacher I always appreciate that in a student," Leesch said.

The eldest of Robert and Susan Swartz's three boys, Aaron Swartz started playing with computers at the age of 3, his father said in an interview. He wrote his first program before he was 10, figuring out how to solve a Sudoku-like puzzle.

The Swartz household had Internet access before most, and that shaped Aaron Swartz's view of the cost and value of knowledge, his father said. Even as a child, he discussed the nature of copyright and decided that digital information with no underlying cost should be free. (He pointedly did not support the piracy of things such as music and movies, his father said.)

At the same time, his family emphasized the importance of advocacy. His grandfather, William Swartz, founded the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation and was honored for his work with the Pugwash organization, which seeks to reduce armed conflicts. Pugwash won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, the year Aaron turned 9.

"He grew up in an environment where those sort of things were held in high esteem, the notion of making the world a better place," Robert Swartz said.

Leesch could see early on that the Internet held a fascination for Swartz. He recalls the last day of Swartz's seventh grade class, when the student called him over to a computer.

"Email was fairly new in those days," Leesch said. "And Aaron was all excited as he told me to open 'that one.'"

Swartz knew that one of Leech's heroes was the science fiction writer Douglas Adams, best known for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The student knew also that Leesch would be leaving soon for a trip to London.

The email was from Adams' personal assistant, detailing how the author would be happy to meet with the teacher in London.

"Aaron, on his own initiative and without me knowing, found out the dates I would be in London and arranged for me to meet him," said Leesch, who met with Adams for four hours during the London trip. "It is one of the highlights of my life."

Lee Block, a middle school teacher at North Shore Country Day School, taught Swartz math and science in eighth grade.

"When you teach science, some students are not good at it, or don't like it," Block said. "Some are smart and do whatever it takes to get an A. Then there are a select few who are naturally curious about how things work and don't care about the grade. Aaron was one of those. He had a thirst for knowledge."

Pam Whalley, the head of the lower school at North Shore Country Day, said Swartz started at the school in second grade. Even then, he seemed curious beyond his years, she said.

"He was a creative thinker, a good problem solver, and loved a good challenge," Whalley said. "He had an insatiable curiosity — always asking deep questions and enjoying such conversations with his teachers and peers at school."

Later, Swartz would create a Wikipedia-like web encyclopedia as a teenager, and go on to co-found the popular Reddit website, He became a champion for online openness and argued for free access to academic research papers.

Hundreds gathered at a Highland Park synagogue on Jan. 15 to mourn Swartz, who hanged himself Jan. 11 in his New York home.

"He could have done so much more, but now he is dead. There is no way to explain this," his father said during the service.